Firey balls!!

[Ree]

Did you at least offer him a cup of ice to 'dunk his donuts' in?

OK...that was just too funny.

[karl hungus]

I was laughing so hard...
Hey, shoplifters are people too.
You should have helped him dry off and furnished him with another cup of coffee to steal.
Geeez, you workers are soooo inconsiderate.

[Canarr]

You need to introduce him to the lady here that spilled Mickey D's coffee on herself and was initially awarded $3 million!

Not entirely correct; here's the full story, for those who are interested:

http://www.stellaawards.com/stella.html

[Jacen]

# The plaintiffs were apparently able to document 700 cases of burns from McDonald's coffee over 10 years, or 70 burns per year. But that doesn't take into account how many cups are sold without incident. A McDonald's consultant pointed out the 700 cases in 10 years represents just 1 injury per 24 million cups sold! For every injury, no matter how severe, 23,999,999 people managed to drink their coffee without any injury whatever. Isn't that proof that the coffee is not "unreasonably dangerous"?
# Even in the eyes of an obviously sympathetic jury, Stella was judged to be 20 percent at fault -- she did, after all, spill the coffee into her lap all by herself. The car was stopped, so she presumably was not bumped to cause the spill. Indeed she chose to hold the coffee cup between her knees instead of any number of safer locations as she opened it. Should she have taken more responsibility for her own actions?

Why do people always blame others for THEIR mistakes?

[Dreamstalker]

You should have helped him dry off and furnished him with another cup of coffee to steal.

"Again?! But that trick never works!"

Maybe I (still) have too much faith in the human thought process, but I fail to see how he could have ever thought that would work.

Waiting with bated breath for the tale of him trying to sue, if that ever comes to pass...

[Becks]

Why do people always blame others for THEIR mistakes?

Because it's fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

Or they don't realize how stupid they are.

Take your pick.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Also....did anyone else mentally append "Salty" and/or "chocolate" to the thread title? ><

/falsetto voice

"Put 'em in your mouth...."

Anyhoo, I hope this renders the coffee thief unable to pass on his stupid, and puts him in the running for a Darwin Award.

[Jacen]

Because it's fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

Or they don't realize how stupid they are.

Take your pick.

I pick that they use the "law" as a crutch :P

[DannyboyO1]

I think the real reason that people blame others rather than themselves for their own stupidity is simple. Bad parenting.

I learned early on, people make mistakes. Then, you clean up after them to the best of your ability. Life goes on.

Folks getting burned by coffee and requiring skin grafts... sounds awful, but that's what health insurance is for. To make an $800,000 health bill only cost $20,000.

Some people learn a different lesson in life. "Never show weakness." It's why some of us have bosses that will persist in following a bad idea into disaster, because admitting that an idea of theirs was flawed would make them "look bad". And they wouldn't have a pile of hard and expensive evidence to back them up on the decision to about-face. Then they can say to their boss "Hey, I've got this evidence that suggests we need to do this another way. Should save us a bundle in lawsuits." It only works where people report to someone who has no idea how things are supposed to work, they just have statistics and artificial metrics.

And then, of course, you have egotists. People who learned from cats. If you've ever seen a cat miss a jump, they try to pass it off like they meant to fall 20' and clutch for dear life at everything on the way down. They don't believe there's anyone else in the world of any importance. Often frustrated with the way life never works quite right. The sort of person who can hit the quit button on an app, hit "don't save", and then, when it doesn't save, get mad that they lost the data they worked on. It inconveniences them, so it's the universe's fault.

I'm guessing the guy with the recaffinated nuts is part of the latter category.

[Tria]

Also....did anyone else mentally append "Salty" and/or "chocolate" to the thread title? ><

Nope.... just Kramer.

[Geek King]

Why do people always blame others for THEIR mistakes?

Because you don't get paid for hurting yourself through foolishness. Unless you work for Jackass or the government, of course.

[cinema guy]

Soon all paper coffee cups will have two warnings:

"Caution contents may be hot" and
"Caution do not put down pants."

[Slow-Jo]

well we can always hope that this little incident will ensure that his stupidity will not make it to another generation!

[Jester]

You need to introduce him to the lady here that spilled Mickey D's coffee on herself and was initially awarded $3 million!

Well, no. See, she actually BOUGHT her coffee!

Why do people always blame others for THEIR mistakes?

Because they're blithering fucking idiots with less common sense than a drunken rabid wildebeest?

[Freemage]

Why do people always blame others for THEIR mistakes?

The problem with the facts you highlighted is that it's an example of how larger corporations immunize themselves from the consequences of their actions. It's considered acceptable to cause 70 burns a year because the average cost of the settlements involved was less than the cost of altering their product (by, say, providing a stronger paper cup, and printing a clear warning about the contents). The same point gets made in the movie Fight Club--take the cost of issuing a recall (A), versus the cost of all the lawsuits filed because of a particular defective part (B). If A > B, then no recall is put forth, even if it means several people die. The only way to hold a company like this accountable for their own actions is with the possibility of large punitive damages; it's not about what the plaintiff deserves, but about making sure that corporations have an incentive to act responsibly.

Sure, there are egregious and abusive cases; this isn't one of them, and never was. Hell, McD's even turned down a reasonable damages-only settlement offer, so I've got no sympathy for them.

EDIT: And yes, the guy who stuck the cup down his pants deserved exactly what he got.